Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday December 22, 2010 @05:41PM
from the new-low-interest-sheriff-in-town dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Two weeks ago, MasterCard felt the wrath of Anonymous Operation Payback-style DDoS attacks after refusing to process payments that were intended to fund WikiLeaks, the website which began leaking confidential US diplomatic cables last month. Now, the company is preparing to head down another controversial path by pledging to deny transactions which support websites that host pirated movies, music, games, or other copyrighted content. MasterCard lobbyists have also been in talks with entertainment industry trade groups, including the RIAA and the MPAA, and have made it clear that the company will support the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA), sources close to the talks have said."

If I say that people engaged in prostitution are more likely to have STDs, am I a knowledgeable person, or would you convict me of engaging a prostitute? Perhaps I must also be a fool because I know things about 419 scams? Surely I'm a terrorist for seeing weaknesses in the TSA programs.

If you say that people engaged in prostitution most likely have STDs, I'd say you've made an educated assumption. If you say that most people engaged in prostitution do have STDs, I'd be led to assume that you had firsthand experience.

Follow the same logic for your other examples. OP said "most pay warez sites seem to be scams" (rather than "must be" or "are probably") and "some even list fake games" (rather than "probably" or "might"). This implies firsthand knowledge.

For all that (rather tortured) explanation, one simple fact remains: knowledge does not always imply guilt.

People can have friends who experienced the field firsthand (he could be a teen), or they be a researcher in that field (he could be working for the Business Software Alliance), or they could simply be (inaccurately) extrapolating from what he's heard.

Not really. I've seen those pay sites too: They usually let you browse without paying, in order to attract customers, and only charge for the download function. It's also fairly obvious that some of their entries are fakes, as they are generated from the search string. So if you search for "alaierubgligrf" you'll see a "alaierubgligrf full [DVDRIP] [DIVX].avi" in the results.

I'd rather have it known that I purchased the game legitimately, and had to use third party tools to make the software playable as opposed to being yet another person lumped in as another freeloader.

If paying customers make a loud enough statement about something, publishers back down. The removal of some Draconian DRM systems in the past were victories, however small, in this direction. What would help immensely is if publishers see people buying games and stating explicitly they their choices were affec

I'd rather keep a box full of gold or titanium, since they take-up less space, and they can't be devalued by the Federal Reserve's printing presses.
As for theft: The Canadian RIAA (and probably US RIAA too) has stolen more from artists then any of us ever could. They owes billions in unpaid royalties to their artists. "The claims arise from a longstanding practice of the recording industry in Canada, described in the lawsuit as "exploit now, pay later if at all." It involves the use of works that are often included in compilation CDs (ie. the top dance tracks of 2009) or live recordings. The record labels create, press, distribute, and sell the CDs, but do not obtain the necessary copyright licences."
"Instead, the names of the songs on the CDs are placed on a "pending list", which signifies that approval and payment is pending. The pending list dates back to the late 1980s, when Canada changed its copyright law by replacing a compulsory licence with the need for specific authorization for each use. It is perhaps better characterized as a copyright infringement admission list, however, since for each use of the work, the record label openly admits that it has not obtained copyright permission and not paid any royalty or fee."
"Over the years, the size of the pending list has grown dramatically, now containing over 300,000 songs. From Beyonce to Bruce Springsteen, the artists waiting for payment are far from obscure, as thousands of Canadian and foreign artists have seen their copyrights used without permission and payment." http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4596/135/ [michaelgeist.ca]

Indeed. If you're going to pirate something... why would you pay for it?

The six million dollar man was not available in the US until recently. So instead of a Bit-torrent download, I now have the complete Time Life set.

I wanted a legit copy for a long time, but I wasn't allowed to have one for decades. I don't download warez or songs, but if the industry is going to have its collective head up its ass when it comes to releasing stuff to NetFlix or DVD, then frankly it deserves to lose revenue to others that

Um, they already are. They eat the cost of criminal transactions rather than force their customers to absorb all of those losses. Given that, it makes sense for them to block people from making payments to criminal enterprises (since their "customers" could easily turn around and say "I didn't buy those downloaded CDs, I'm not paying that money.")

You know what would be funny right about now? For the same silly folks that claim you can vote with your wallet when it comes to poor service and high prices for communication services to chime in about credit payment service companies...

Ok, fine. You are now liable for any criminal transactions you don't block.

If you don't like that, you will send my money where I tell you to.

Yes, but this is also similar to a Google story recently, (and a comment I made about the possible dangers of Google proactively filtering content of this nature). For whatever reason, the pressures in this respect seem to be causing a lot of big companies to bow down and make what could be really big mistakes. These mistakes invalidate parts of the DMCA protection by proving the company/companies can filter stuff - but you already allude to that.

And if you're performing illicit activities, wouldn't you want to use a pre-paid credit card for that? Why would you use your official MasterCard, which has you home address listed, reports to credit agencies, has sales records that could be subpoenaed... Why not just buy drugs with your MasterCard while you're at it. Seems pretty stupid.

I also don't get what MasterCard gets out of sucking up to the RIAA et al.

Of course. Indie music is destroying the industry by providing more variety, fresher ideas and comparable quality for less money (or even FREE) without paying a dime to the RIAA. How are artists supposed to express themselves artistically without the RIAA protecting them?

They may get caught in the crossfire. I know indy bands have had terrible problems trying to sell their music in CD form on ebay, because ebay's policy is to assume that anything on CD-R is copyright infringing, no exceptions. It would cost more to investigate a claim of legality than they'd make from the auction, so they just blanket prohibit CD-Rs.

I bet that if 1 million people cut up their MasterCard and switch to Visa, and another million people cut up their Visa and switch to MasterCard, those evil bastards at the credit card companies will really start to sit up and take notice!

There's one problem I have with debit cards vs. credit cards. (At least theoretically; it's never come up for me.)

I'm supposed to get the same protections on both. I can use either in similar ways.

However, if there is a dispute, the money's in different places. If I have a credit card dispute, I've got the money, and they have no means to get it from me for at least as long as the dispute goes long. If I have a debit card dispute, the money's out of my account until the bank puts it back, which is

Debit's pretty handy, and it's the same money anyway (if you're like me and pay off your credit card right away).

Unless you're in a location you trust, debit is a really *really* bad idea. If a machine has been tampered with, a thief could gain access to your account. And guess what? If you lose your cash, *the bank won't help you*.

Conversely, fraudulent transactions on a CC are trivially reversed. Given the choice, particularly when traveling, I'd use a CC over a debit card any day of the week.

That seems like an odd reaction - it's the TV network that sold those ads. I just stopped watching TV networks, and haven't seen that sort of annoying ad for ages. I still see more traditional ads in some official TV downloads, but those are far less annoying - and of course no ads on Netflix where I watch most of my TV. I think you're boycotting the wrong guys.

So let me get this right, money equals speech [wikipedia.org], according to various Supreme Court Rulings [wikipedia.org]. But a major corporation whose credit and debit vehicles constitute one of the major means for tendering payment, i.e., speech, is permitted to filter your payments to whomever it likes.

In other words, a bank gets to decide when your speech is acceptable and when it isn't.

And, of course, if you're wealthy or powerful enough, this isn't a hindrance. But if you're a working stiff, living on a trickle of cash flow and using revolving credit to solve the logistical problems thereof, you're essentially subject to the bank's approval of your fiscal expression.

Yet another distinction between serfs and lords in the information age.

Somewhat of a flaw in the US legal system. The foundational princibles were written to provide extensive protection from government oppression, but none from corporate oppression. At the time there just hadn't been any corporations with so much power that it was seen as a concern. The age of the multinational megacorp didn't come until much later.

Somewhat of a flaw in the US legal system. The foundational princibles were written to provide extensive protection from government oppression, but none from corporate oppression. At the time there just hadn't been any corporations with so much power that it was seen as a concern. The age of the multinational megacorp didn't come until much later.

At the time of the founding fathers a corporate charter was granted with the express goal of doing something and was forbidden, by law, to diversify. For example a

> So let me get this right, money equals speech,> Yet another distinction between serfs and lords in the information age.

Nope.

Cut the hyperbolic crap. Even the Wikipedia article that you linked to refutes that (emphasis mine):

Buckley v. Valeo, 424 U.S. 1 (1976), was a case in which the Supreme Court of the United States upheld a federal law which set limits on campaign contributions, but ruled that spending money to influence elections is a form of constitutionally protected free speech, and struck down portions of the law.

They didn't rule that "money equals speech". They ruled that "spending money to influence elections is a form of constitutionally protected free speech". There's a difference, a big one in fact.

actually its not YOUR money, your getting credit for a purchase, which you then have to pay (if its a credit, not a debit card). so they CAN do this but legally its grey area, but does open up doors if they start selectively denying transactions, more people will move to other credit providers or be sued for denying a legitimate transaction.... we shall see

true, they should not be interfering with legitimate transactions unless indicated by the government not to do so due to illegal activity, unfortunately in America the gov has gotten out of control and is trying to control everything, business must obey the gov else they will be shut down (great democratic process there).
Unless the BoA has a document stating its required to stop transactions, its interfering with a legitimate transaction and should be accountable as wire fraud (deny of funds).

Actually, they already deny transactions that are illegal in countries of the card's origin (certain types offshore gambling is one example I've seen).
But this is screwed up in that it's not illegal to give money to, say, Bit Gamer or The Pirate Bay, but they're denying it anyway.

I have no problem with credit card companies refusing to do business with pirate sites or any site that sponsors or encourages illegal activities. If MasterCard bases their decisions on accurate information and is conservative about how they evaluate the evidence, that's not a bad thing. I would be concerned if MasterCard approached this with the same sort of "diligence" characteristic of the MPAA and RIAA where innocent parties are falsely accused and convicted until they prove otherwise. Are they also g

The entire music industry, worldwide, only sold $15.8 billion in product last year. For comparison, worldwide liquor sales were about $220 billion, and a single booze company, Diageo (Smirnoff Vodka, Johhny Walker, José Cuervo, Baileys, and Guinness Stout) has more revenue than the entire music industry. On a worldwide scale, the music industry is tiny.

On the movie side, MGM just came out of bankruptcy, and Warner is close to it. Hollywood Video went bust months ago, and Blockbuster is in bankruptcy. (Many Blockbuster stores will close after the holiday season.)

In computing, Apple's revenue for fiscal 2010 is about $63 billion. Microsoft revenue was about $60 billion. HP annual revenue is about $120 billion. Dell annual revenue is about $52 billion. Google is around $23 billion. Comcast is around $36 billion. AT&T is at $124 billion. Any of those players could buy out the entire libraries of most music and movie companies.

I'm surprised that Apple hasn't just bought out the music industry, rather than negotiating with it.

In terms of social influence though, music has a huge advantage. Music, film, TV, news... it's all basically the same few companies. So the music labels can be assured of favorable coverage in the media, because they *are* the media. For example, ABC is sure to tell lots of news stories about how internet piracy is ruining the film industry, for it is owned by Disney.

They only have influence if you watch it. And these days of the information age, the only people who watch TV the most are in the 40-60 bracket last time I looked. They are for all things a dying breed, most of the people here span two generations of information technology. We can remember the world without information being so easy to get, and we know how awesome it was when we could get it.

The current generation of kids(20 and under) have no idea what life was like beforehand. They'll be the ones driv

you recently submitted a payment to sdf.lonestar.org for your MetaARPA sustaining membership. This site has been identified as a Hacking site [sdf.org]and as such has been blacklisted from our payment processing system. Furthermore your donation to OpenBSD has also been declined for processing as the openBSD project sponsors known hacking activity [wikipedia.org] and said bad things about our unquestionably patrio-tastic freedom war against terror.

in summation your cards with us have also been cancelled as you've been identified without a magnetic ribbon on any vehicles registered in your name, and are obviously not supporting the troops.

please consider purchasing a copy of jeff dunhams 'achmed the terrorist' comedy DVD, as well as anything sufficiently xenophobic, bigoted and patriotic from the Country music top 10/50/100 charts. Once clad only in a sweat-stained american flag and nourished only by fast food, can we consider reactivating any of your perpetual debt engines.

What does this really mean? On the face of it no one should really object to Mastercard / Visa / etc denying service to criminal enterprises or criminal activities. This is to be expected both in terms of business ethics and legal liability.

So the question is: who determines which enterprise is criminal / violating copyrights and what are the criteria and what is the process to have someone cut off? What is the appeal process?

From TFA:"This move by MasterCard is just another in a recent long line of corporations and organizations that are taking it upon themselves to define the legality of situations rather than leaving it to the courts. One problem is that the US federal government is allowing the lobbyists for these organizations to dictate right and wrong. The RIAA and MPAA were the big influence behind the government’s seizure of several domains during the last week of November. "

Worst case, this is a monetary blacklist controlled by the RIAA (eg: RIAA sends unsubstantiated note to Mastercard listing "offenders". Mastercard moves immediately to deny service.) Very nice club for the RIAA to hold.

It means that the banks are deciding what's illegal now. The government either doesn't have the authority (not this country) or a real reason to shut them down, so now the banks are doing it for them. Justice is served?

If the WikiLeaks "dirty" fightback taught the world anything then it was that the USA has too much control over critical worldwide infrastructure both technical and practical (Internet and Money) and it has shown that it cannot be trusted to control either. For reasons of their own most nations have been going along with the current world order as it was never openly abused and this allowed tacit approval, but as pressure grows from China, India and an emerging EU/Russia along with growing understanding from the people in these nations the world has in fact already irreparably changed. These sorts of activities will only hasten that change of power much to the detriment of the existing regimes. As the Chinese (and Mr Pratchett) say "May you live in Interesting times", it is a curse for a reason and these are interesting times.

I wonder how many thousands of snipped-up credit cards (along with a final payment, if necessary)it would take to persuade MasterCard that they are being stupid. I wish I could say I used them so I could be one of them.

While there's boatloads of free legal porn out there, some people still feel the need to pay for it. I assume that the same goes for the illegal stuff, you can get freebies if you look hard enough and some of the people producing it are amateurs but others are expecting to get paid. Certainly the FBI mail order stings we've heard about in the papers involved people sending payment in some fashion or another to obtain their illegal porn with kids or whatever. How did they do it then? How do they do it online

What is needed here is that they either get in big trouble for taking part in illegal transactions even if they don't know, or they have to agree to some "common carrier" like status in which they are not allowed to discriminate against

> What is needed here is that they either get in big trouble for taking part in illegal> transactions even if they don't know, or they have to agree to some "common carrier"> like status in which they are not allowed to discriminate against any transaction that is legal.

This would involve the government actually doing their job and REGULATING. Neither political party will do that now... or they will do something like they did with net neutrality yesterday and only make it APPEAR like they doing re

If MasterCard and Visa does this for the MPAA, then anyone filing a lawsuit against any company will also name them as a Defendants so that there can be an order that will prevent MasterCard and Visa from processing payments until the Court is happy.

Applying this to pirate content is kind of lame, since payments aren't what drives that. BUT I've always thought the Visa+Mastercard collectively have always had the power to end 90% of all spam, and could do it in a matter of weeks.

All it would take is:

1) terms of service forbidding UCE for products.

2) a few effectively placed honeypot/canary accounts

3) a couple tiger teams to place orders for the products that get spammed, and

If a cc company doesn't like your product, for whatever reason, they'll institute policies banning you and everyone else in your business. Is it legal to buy marijuana in your location? It doesn't matter if you live in one of the many places where it is, cc companies won't knowingly give those merchants accounts. Want to buy pictures of "child models"? Those sites can't get cc companies to work with them simply because their product is icky (not illegal in most countries, just really icky).

Sell something, do something, say something that the cc companies think will make them look bad and they'll cut you off. This is a surprise?

What's surprising to me is that the cc companies have decided that "pirate" sites (or however they define this subset of customers that they're going to cut off) are a sufficiently serious source of bad press that it's worthwhile to cut them off. More people every day are becoming more educated about media distribution, how evil some of the companies involved are, and how not-necessarily-immoral is the whole notion of downloading media. They might derive some public-image profit in the short term among the uneducated but I have to believe that in the long term most of their customers are going to understand this was a really dumb move.

So, let me get this straight... Mastercard won't let you buy a T-Shirt from Pirate Bay because they are evil haxors, but, I can still use my card to donate hundreds to the Klu Klux Klan? What does that say about Mastercard, or the rest of America for that matter?

How is it that the KKK didn't get branded a terrorist organization right after 9/11 anyhow? Why is it that we support/tolerate homegrown terrorism, such as white supremacy, as long as those guys aren't muslim?

That got me thinking - if I'm allowed to create backup copies of items I've purchased, can I claim that I am merely helping someone create a backup inside the cloud if I seed my downloads, just as others are helping me create backups in cloud?

You don't, but the Pirate Bay actively encourages people to go out and buy branded T-shirts and such which support them; this merchandise is manufactured and sold by a third party (of which there are many). I've no doubt other sites do something similar.

Watch how quickly the merchandising companies drop them if Mastercard approach and say "Nice business you got here. Be a shame if you weren't able to accept credit cards any more." The already did something similar with allofmp3.ru.

We've all been paying for it for years with the RIAA/MPAA hollywood accounting, price fixing and cartel-like behaviour.

Copyright infringement is just Karma on those dying lobby groups.

Not to mention the MPAA/RIAA tax on blank VHS, Cassettes, CD, DVDs, etc.

I'm an indie film buff, and bi-weekly patron and volunteer at a local indie music venue. I don't watch or listen to Hollywood crap or boring mass produced "Pop" music....

... Yet I STILL have to fund these MPAA/RIAA goons by purchasing CDs / DVDs, etc, that I use for my code backups. I sympathize with the pirates, more power to them, they're already taxing us for our blank media, why not use it to store the music and movies that they

How about the fact that he MPAA and RIAA have significant clout with retailers? If they tell retailers "Drop MasterCard or we'll drop you", quite a few retailers would no longer accept MasterCards. There goes those profits!

I guess Cyberpunk gave us a pretty good idea what's gonna happen then: When you outlaw money, money will only be used for illegal means because, well, you can't really buy your dope with your credit card. The net effect will not be that (printed) money ceases to exist, it only becomes a secondary currency for the more illegal deals. And since people cannot earn that money legally, like they can now to buy their illegal goods, they will have to break the law to access this currency.